ducker
5381
Totally… I’m like… ok you’re right there and you’re going to run from dogs? Kill the dogs, overpower dooshead, and take Theon back out.
Gawd this show is so good. The only thing that pisses me off about it is that it always goes by so quickly, that hour feels like 5 minutes and I am always left staring at the credits, singing their song, wanting more. Dammit.
Dinklage is amazing.
Pure, distilled awesome. All the bits were great (bar that goofy dogs thing as some have mentioned above), but Dinkange’s speech was thunderously gripping - my hairs were standing on end.
I’ve never gotten the Dany hate though, she’s a wonderful character and is meant to be a learning character, like Arya. What’s not to like about someone who has the balls to go against the weight of a culture’s tradition and run around freeing slaves?
In fact, if anything, I didn’t like that little moral homily re. Hizdaq Lol Whatsis’s dad, it’s not in the books, and it smacks too much of a modern-day sensibility that GRRM carefully avoids in the books, where there is no mention of anyone speaking up against the kiddie crucifixions. (And be it remembered, in the books they’re live disembowellings and crucifixions, with some of the kids still barely alive and their guts hanging out.) The dude was a Master, if he was so upset about the crucified kiddies he should have taken his leave of such a rotten, corrupt, disgusting slave culture and come to Dany’s side; that he didn’t makes him a voluntary participant in a guilty collective. Words are wind.
Dany’s lesson is partly about the unintended consequences of even good, just actions, but that doesn’t make what she does any less good or just. Just not … pragmatic (as she was warned by Ser Barristan).
I suspect Dany haters just like to be contrarian and not give in to her many and obvious charms! It’s such a tic in contemporary culture to see heroes as having feet of clay that sometimes the clay is all people acknowledge.
Great episode, but we’re finding the Theon/Reek stuff just a distraction. My wife turned to me at the end of the episode and said “If they didn’t spend so much screen time on useless shit like Theon, they could concentrate more on the good stuff”. :) She got even more annoyed when I explained that he’s a non-story for most of the books.
And agreed on Dinklage’s acting. You could feel his heartbreak when he plead with Shae not to betray him. Anger is easy to protray, but that soul-crushed, defeated hopeless reaching out? That was brilliant
A memorable episode. About the dogs, as I saw it she went in there with the intention of grabbing Theon, then making a run for it. The dogs, in this scenario, were a non issue, barking or not. It was only after reaching Theon, having him resist and costing much time, did the dogs become the deciding factor and then it was too late. Why would I, in her position, waste time killing dogs when I could grab my brother and run?
In Dany’s case, I don’t see why she’d be so quick to believe everything conquered people tell her. Let me get this straight, you were born into wealth and privilege. Your fellow wealthy powerful people crucified these kids, except for your dad, he was against it. So then, all these years and all his wealth and power, what was your dad doing to change things? Yeah, that’s what I thought. If I was her I’d say “Well, a lot of people who shouldn’t have been killed were killed. The masters will remain crucified one day longer than those kids we saw on the way here. Then they can get the same kind of burial the slaves got. NEXT!”
edit: I thought the Theon bath scene paid off all the torture scenes we got, and did it well. It was easily the creepiest scene between both of them, yet it wouldn’t have worked, for me, without seeing the torture. I would never buy Theon refusing to leave with his sister, and being totally freaked out by the offer of a simple bath, if I hadn’t seen with my own eyes what he got put through. Seeing the scars wouldn’t be enough.
JMR
5386
Agreed, it really feels like 5 minutes and now we’re down to just 3 episodes left for the season? Makes me sad really. Are the production costs for this show so high that they can’t stretch it out to to 15 or so?
Pic of the new Mountain played by Halfthor Bjornson.
Beast mode.
Whoa, he’s only a half Thor?
To be clear, I don’t hate the Dany stuff… but it is tonally different from the Westros stuff. In the books this wasn’t so jarring since you’d get 50 to 100 pages of Dany’s epic fantasy before flipping back to the more gritty goings on, but in the show where it’s maybe 12 minutes the effect is quite pronounced. And her screen-time in the first season was some of the best stuff in there. It’s just that - like the books - her exploits in Slavers’ Bay is a distraction from the far more interesting stuff happening elsewhere.
Eh. She learned a lot in Season 1, and she learned a bit in Season 2 and 3. Here, the stuff she’s learning is the same things we’re seeing already with Joffrey/Tommen.
Here’s where I have hope that the show will be better than the books: in the books, Hizdahr is a smarmy nobleman constantly asking permission to re-open the fighting pits. Moreover, he’s a symptom of why the Meereen stuff in the books is so torturous - we don’t really care if Daenerys reopens the pits or not; we know she’s not going to marry the nobleman that’s sniffing around her, and we know that the Sons of the Harpy are not a serious threat… all these things occupying pages and pages of space are just filler until she meets up with ex-pats from Westros.
Already Hizdahr mk II is less boring than his book incarnation, so I applaud this appearance.
That pic reminds me of what a truly beautiful woman Lena Headey is. The awful character she plays (and very well) makes me forget that sometimes.
Hmm, yeah, when you put it that way, it does make him a more interesting character, with some emotional bite, from the get-go.
The filial son who asked to bury his father is gonna be a significant member of the Sons of Mithras. Oh that nice guy, danerys? He’s one of the murdering people.
Good lord Dinklage chewed the scenery in that last scene, but in a good way. Jamie and Tywin’s scene was absolutely great. His smug almost-smile at the end was perfect.
hepcat
5394
I would seriously put Dinklage up against most of the acting greats from the last 50 years. I really hope he has a long career that doesn’t rely on type casting because of his size.
Gendal
5395
Not a fan of Dinklage’s attempt to employ an accent. It feels slightly wrong to me. Everything else is fantastic.
He’s a good actor but he just doesn’t have an ear for accents, alas.
I have trouble ignoring it as well.
Otherwise a fantastic episode.
Gil102
5398
Apparently I am not as sensitive to accents as many of you seem to be because I honestly have no idea what you are talking about. Dinklage literally sounds (to me) the same in this season as he did the first season. Really, the only character whose accent seemed to change in my opinion has been Littlefinger’s when he showed up to whisk Sansa away. Still, not enough for me to complain about…the show is pretty damn awesome imho.
I can hear Dinklage doing his accent, his attempt at one that is, but it doesn’t bother me. It has become part of his character to me. It’s like he’s sort of a Lannister but still off on his own, his accent is how the outcast of the family would talk.
Great episode! I have no doubts that Tyrion will discover that Tywin is having sex with Shae and end up killing them both, just like in the books. Tywin having sex with Shae really puts a great spin on his character, in that he’s not just extremely harsh to both his own family and everyone else, but also ultimately a hypocrite, and I don’t believe the show would want to miss this, especially considering how it usually handles sex.
